Class Notes, Spring 2013

1959

• George Barry Bertram (BA’57) lives in Campbellsville, Kentucky. He continues to practice part time in the state prosecutor’s office, where he has worked for more than 30 years.

1964

• Ned. A. Stewart Jr. (BA’61) has retired after 48 years, having spent the past 20 years as city attorney of Texarkana, Arkansas. Ned and his wife, Kathy, plan to remain in Texarkana.

1965

• William Landis Turner serves on the county commission in Lewis County, Tennessee. He is chairman and CEO of the South Central Tennessee Railroad Authority.

1968

• Alan F. Klein is a partner at Duane Morris in Philadelphia. Alan has had a wonderful career with four great Philadelphia-based firms. His busy practice now focuses on representation of generic drug companies and defense of pharmaceutical products liability cases. He has four children and three grandchildren.

1969

• Harlan Dodson III received the Nashville Bar Association’s John C. Tune Community Service Award, recognizing the highest degree of dedication as a lawyer and for the betterment of the community. The award was presented to Harlan by former Nashville Mayor Bill Purcell ’79 at the NBA’s annual meeting in December 2012.

1972

• Jack W. Burtch Jr., a founding partner of Macaulay & Burtch in Richmond, is one of
• 20 new members of the Virginia Law Foundation’s 2013 Class of Fellows.
• Gordon James III, a partner in the Ft. Lauderdale, Florida office of Sedgwick, and Thomas V. “Tom” White have both been inducted as a fellows of the American College of Trial Lawyers.
• Paul Kurtz (BA’68) is the general chair of the Class of 1968 45th Reunion of this October. His work as fundraising chair for the 40th Reunion of the law school’s Class of 1972 in 2012 resulted an overwhelming response from his class.

1973

• James W. Bradford will step down as the dean of Vanderbilt’s Owen Graduate School of Management at the end of the academic year, after leading Owen for nine years. Jim was also recently elected chairman of the board for Lebanon-based Cracker Barrel Old Country Store.

1974

• John L. Ryder has been appointed general counsel of the Republican National Committee. John was previously a member of Harris Shelton Hanover Walsh in Memphis.

1975

• W. Paul Phillips, who served as district attorney general for the Eighth Judicial District of Tennessee for 33 years before retiring, has been named executive director of the Roane State Foundation.
• J. Hobson Presley Jr., a partner at Balch & Bingham in Birmingham, Alabama, was awarded the Carlson Prize last fall by the National Association of Bond Lawyers at its general meeting in Chicago. Hobby was honored for his article, “The Disclosure Dilemma for VRDOs Secured by a Letter of Credit.”

1976

• Lawrence J. McNamara has been appointed by Texas Governor Rick Perry to a one-year term on the Appraisal Management Companies Advisory Committee, which will advise the Texas Appraiser Licensing and Certification Board on regulation of appraisal management companies. Larry is in private practice in Dallas.
• James Randolph Smith has joined Belmont University’s Board of Trustees. Randy, a former Belmont trustee from 1982–87, is an entertainment industry attorney in Nashville.

1977

• Bradley R. Hume has been elected president of the Louisville Bar Association for 2013. Brad is of counsel for the Louisville firm Thompson Miller & Simpson.
• Tom E. Lindley, chair of Perkins Coie’s environment, energy and resources practice group, recently joined Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber and a small group of business leaders on a business and trade mission to The Netherlands and Germany. Tom also delivered talks at the Yale Law School’s and Yale School of Forestry’s
• 2013 conference on New Directions in Environmental Law and at the National Black Law Students Association annual meeting in Atlanta.
• William R. O’Bryan Jr. has been named leader of the financial services litigation subgroup at Butler Snow O’Mara Stevens & Cannada in Nashville.

1979

• Alan W. Duncan, former partner at Smith Moore Leatherwood, is a founding partner in Van Laningham Duncan/ Turning Point Litigation. Duncan served on the defense team that represented Democratic presidential candidate and former Senator John Edwards from North Carolina on six charges of violating federal campaign finance laws.

1980

• Michael P. Coury has joined Glankler Brown in Memphis as a member. Michael is a fellow with the American College of Bankruptcy. He is director of the Tennessee Chapter of Turnaround Management Association.
• Carol Crossman Honigberg is the new managing partner of Reed Smith’s Falls Church, Virginia, office.

1981

• Ben C. Adams was named CEO of the year in the 200- to 1,000-employee category by Memphis Business Quarterly. Ben has been chairman and CEO of Baker Donelson since 2003. He was also named “Most Innovative Managing Partner” by Law360 in 2012.
• Nashville Mayor Karl F. Dean was one of three city leaders honored by the Friends of National Service with a national award for encouraging community service.
• Kent Alan Halkett, a partner at Musick Peeler & Garrett in Los Angeles, was featured on the cover of the Los Angeles County Bar Association’s December issue of the Los Angeles Lawyer magazine. His article, “School Rules,” discussing California’s “educational malfeasance” rule, was the magazine’s cover story.
• Michael R. McWherter (BA’78) was appointed to the Tennessee Valley Authority board of directors. His appointment, which will expire on May 18, 2016, was confirmed unanimously by the U.S. Senate.
• Thomas Thorp Pennington has joined Frost Brown Todd in Nashville.
• S. Louise Rankin has joined American Baptist Homes of the West, which provides housing for seniors, as senior vice president and general counsel. Louise joined ABHOW in January 2013 after spending 17 years with Jones Day in San Francisco. Her three-decade career concentrated on health care, and Louise helped develop many of the structures available for financing health care organizations today.

1982

• Meredith Brinegar Cross, former director of the corporation finance division at the SEC, has rejoined WilmerHale in Washington, D.C. Meredith served as director of the SEC’s division of corporation finance from June 2009 through 2012.
• Carter Todd has rejoined Adams and Reese as a special counsel. He will also serve as general counsel of XMi Holdings Inc. in Nashville. Carter has served on the Metro Nashville City Council since 2007. He had previously served as general counsel at Gaylord Entertainment since 2001.
• Charles Wolpoff has joined the Kelly Group, a financial planning group in Bel Air, Maryland. A former journalist with a master’s in journalism from the University of Maryland and an LL.M. in taxation from Georgetown, Charlie has written for the Congressional Quarterly, the Baltimore Sun and the Baltimore Business Journal.

1984

• Kenneth B. Cole Jr. (BA’81) has returned to a full-time law practice, joining Eyster Key Tubb Roth Middleton & Adams in Decatur, Alabama. Kenny attended Vanderbilt University on a football scholarship, playing middle linebacker and earning Academic All-SEC honors. He went on sabbatical in January 2011 to start a nonprofit corporation, New Beginnings Academy, to provide a college-preparatory education to underserved children. The organization hopes to open the first of four schools in August.
• Paul C. Ney Jr. (MBA’84), of counsel at Waddey & Patterson, has added “registered patent attorney” to his legal credentials after passing the patent bar examination.

1985

• Kevin Doherty has joined Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough as a partner focusing on insurance regulatory law.
• Lucian T. Pera, a partner at Adams and Reese in Memphis, was inducted into the College of Law Practice Management as a fellow at the 2012 Futures Conference and annual meeting in Washington, D.C.
• Greta Schnetzler has been named chief campus counsel at University of California, San Francisco. She joined UCSF as deputy counsel in 2005, having previously been a partner at Gordon & Rees.
• Amy W. Templeton has been named CEO of McWane Science Center in Birmingham, Alabama. Amy previously worked at Birmingham Museum of Art for 13 years, most recently as its chief operating officer.

1989

• Michael Adam Ketover was recently honored with the Peace Corps’ Director’s Distinguished Service Award, the Corps’ highest form of recognition for distinguished achievement. Mike is a former Peace Corps staff member, having worked in Papua New Guinea, East Timor, Ecuador, Peru and Tanzania, and volunteered in Honduras, Guyana and the Dominican Republic. He manages a U.S. Agency for International Development poverty-reduction project in Ghana, West Africa.
• Paul Kruse (BA’86), a member at Bone McAllester Norton, is the author of “Is Profiting from the Online Use of Another’s Property Unjust? The Use of Brand Names as Paid Search Words,” published in Idea: The IP Law Review, in 2013.
• Louis Theros, a shareholder at Butzel Long, was recognized as a Top Lawyer in employment law in Metro Detroit 2013 in the November/December 2012 DBusiness magazine.

1990

• Stephen Russell Davis has joined A. P. Pharma as chief operating officer. Steve joined the company’s board of directors in 2012.
• Joseph B. Hanks Sr. is vice president, general counsel and secretary of Graham Packaging Company in York, Pennsylvania. Jody, his wife, and their 14-year-old daughter moved to Pennsylvania from Memphis.

1991

• Marc E. D’Antonio was elected to a four-year term on the Muscogee County Probate Court in Columbus, Georgia, and took office January 1. Marc is married to Catherine Dietrich D’Antonio (BS’88). They have two children, Kate, 16, and Jack, 13.
• Duke Eggleston has joined Rose Walker, heading its new office in Durango, Colorado. Duke was in-house general counsel of Durango Mountain Resort and Kirkwood Mountain Resort and will continue to serve those organizations as outside general counsel.
• Troy A. Fuhrman (BA’90), a shareholder at Hill Ward Henderson in Tampa, Florida, has been elected to the board of Business Counsel Inc., a network of law firms. Troy focuses on products liability litigation.
• Dov Moore has opened a general, civil and appellate solo practice in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Dov practiced with Cole & Moore from 1991 to 2012.
• Gregory F. Wesner has joined Lane Powell as a shareholder focusing on intellectual property and technology.

1992

• David Eric Gregerson was sworn in January 14 as a judge in the Superior Court of Clark County, Washington.

1993

• Darrin L. Williams, a principal of Carney Williams Bates Pulliam and Bowman in Little Rock and a current member of the Arkansas General Assembly, has been named CEO of Southern Bancorp, one of the largest community development banks in the U.S.

1994

• David Lee Hudson Jr. has joined the chambers of Tennessee Supreme Court Justice Sharon G. Lee as a permanent clerk. David was a scholar at the First Amendment Center in Nashville.
• Regina Lynn Daniels-Thomas has been appointed deputy chief counsel in the Detroit-based Legal Aid and Defender Association’s Civil Law Group.

1995

• Melanie Black Dubis, a partner at Parker Poe Adams & Bernstein, has been named a fellow of the Litigation Counsel of America. Melanie was featured as one of the “10 People to Watch in 2013” by the Triangle Business Journal. She provides pro bono services as the general counsel to the Alliance of AIDS Services in Raleigh.
• Gordon Franklin Peery has joined Borden Ladner Gervais as global derivatives advisor. Gordon will continue to practice law in California, where he lives, and support his U.S. clients and BLG’s derivatives clients in Canada and around the world. His book, The Post-Reform Guide to Derivatives and Futures (Wiley, 2012), was a 2012 International Book Awards winner.
• Susan Belle Steelman (BA’92) joined Miller & Martin in Nashville of counsel. She had worked on the legal staff at Children’s Hospital in Norfolk, Virginia.

1996

• Mary Ann Poirier has joined the University of Dayton as general counsel.
• Paul Bennett Seusy, who heads his own firm in Arkadia, Florida, has been elected to serve on the board of directors for the South Florida State College Foundation. Paul was voted “DeSoto County’s Best Attorney” in 2012 by readers of the Charlotte Sun-Herald’s Arcadian.
• Kara Elizabeth Shea has been named the labor and employment practice group leader at Butler Snow O’Mara Stevens & Cannada in Nashville.

1997

• Renee M. H. Yuen (BA’94) and herfamily welcomed Owen Wai-Lun Juden on September 24, 2012. The family lives in Orlando, Florida, where Renee is principal counsel at Walt Disney World Resort.

1998

• Kasey L. Bond has joined Keating Muething & Klekamp in Cincinnati as a partner in the firm’s labor and employment group.
• Amy Everhart welcomed a son, Fred Theodore “Teddy” Everhart, on February 23. She is the owner of Everhart Law Firm in Nashville.
• Gindi Eckel Vincent has joined the legal department at ExxonMobil as counsel. She has also been elected to the 2013 Women’s Energy Network board of directors.

1999

• Jongghun Lee has been appointed managing director of Barclays Natural Resource Investments in Qatar. He also serves on the BNRI Investment Committee.

2000

• William W. Berry III was elected 2013 Teacher of the Year by students at the University of Mississippi School of Law. Will joined the Mississippi law faculty in
• 2008 as an assistant professor teaching criminal law. His research focuses on capital punishment and sentencing, and he has published 16 articles in legal journals over the past five years. He also facilitated the development of a new journal, the Mississippi Sports Law Review. Will clerked for Judge Thomas Wiseman ’54 (BA’52) of Tennessee’s Middle District and Judge Gilbert S. Merritt Jr. ’60 of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals before entering the academy.
• Jennifer Kirk Dunlap, a partner with Parker Poe who heads the firm’s South Carolina employment team, was included in the Charleston Regional Business Journal’s 2013 “40 Under 40” list.
• Michael Robert Houston, a partner with Cummins & White in Newport Beach, California, is serving as the city of Anaheim’s interim City Attorney.
• Andrea P. Perry, a member with Bone McAllester Norton, was elected to the board of directors of the Nashville Bar Association for a term starting in January. She was also named to the Nashville Business Journal’s “40 Under 40” list.
• Thomas Quinlen is a senior attorney with FedEx Trade Networks in Memphis.

2001

• Todd Giles (MBA’01) has been promoted to managing director at BMO Harris Bank in Atlanta, where he helped open a new corporate banking office last year.
• Jacquelyn Prickett Maroney has been named shareholder at Ogletree Deakins in Austin, Texas. Jacky is married to Patrick Charles Maroney, general counsel for Moxie Software Inc.
• Joycelyn A. Stevenson has joined Littler Mendelson in Nashville as a shareholder. She recently received the 2013 Athena Young Professional Leadership Award, which honors Nashville women who are emerging community leaders.

2002

• Robert Charles Bigelow (BS’99) has been named partner at Dickinson Wright in Nashville. Robb is president of the Young Lawyers Division of the Nashville Bar Association.
• Kyrus Lamont Freeman has been appointed to the Prince George’s County Housing Authority in Maryland.
• Joshua Galante joined White and Williams in New York as an associate.
• Paul Anthony Werner III has joined Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton’s Washington, D.C., office. His practice focuses on complex litigation and communications law.
• Matthew Edward Wright (BA’94) has been elected a shareholder at Hardee Martin & Donahoe in Jackson, Tennessee.

2003

• Nicholas Baumgartner was named by Financial News as a “40 under 40 Rising Star” in the European legal profession. Nicholas heads the equity capital markets legal team at Citigroup. He lives in London with his wife and their two children.
• Eric J. Eisnaugle II and his wife, Carrie J. Eisnaugle (MTS’03), welcomed their second son, Ethan, on October 11, 2011. Ethan joined big brother E.J. The family lives in Orlando, Florida, where Eric practices with Rumberger Kirk and Caldwell and Carrie is an associate at Holland & Knight.
• Amber Lizabeth Ervin has been promoted to partner at Fulbright and Jaworski in Houston.
• Erin Elizabeth Terrell and her husband, Clay Holloway, welcomed their second child, Sydney Amelia, on December 1, 2012. Sydney joins big brother Michael. Erin is vice president and senior corporate counsel at MedAssets in Alpharetta, Georgia.
• William James Tuttle has been promoted to partner at Dechert in Washington, D.C.
• Cynthia Hubbard Wiel (MS’96) is of counsel at Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough in Nashville.

2004

• Kimberly Ann Donohue joined the California Office of the Attorney General in September 2012 as a deputy attorney general, serving in the appeals, writs and trials section in San Diego.
• Raanon Gal has been named partner at FordHarrison in Atlanta.
• Wendee Marie Hilderbrand has been elected to membership at Bass Berry & Simms in Nashville.
• Heather J. Hubbard was listed in The Nashville Business Journal’s 2013 “40 Under 40.” She is a partner at Waller Landsen Dortch & Davis.
• Wendy V. Miller has been elected shareholder by Ogletree Deakins Nash Smoak & Stewart.
• Matthew Tucker Ramenda has been named shareholder at Jones Foster. He is serving his third term as an elected member of the Florida Bar Board of Governors Young Lawyers Division and serves on the executive board for the Palm Beach County Bar Association Young Lawyers Division.
• Daniel Jacob Steimel and Natalie Mathews Steimel ’04 welcomed a daughter, Annalee Jane, on October 7, 2012. Annie joins big brothers Jake (5), Max (2) and Sam (2). The family lives in Phoenix, where Natalie is the director of attorney recruiting and development for Snell & Wilmer and Dan is assistant general counsel for Grand Canyon University.

2005

• Courtney Lynn Bru has been named a partner at Doerner Saunders Daniel & Anderson in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
• Damien Andrew Grierson has joined K&L Gates in Boston as a senior associate.
• Rachana Ashok Desai Martin has been promoted to deputy chief counsel of the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Financial Stability, where she manages litigation and oversight matters related to the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
• Monica Pace Messick has been elected partner at Jackson Walker in Dallas.
• Christopher Thomas Murray has joined Thompson Coburn in Washington, D.C.
• Julie P. Samuels has joined the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit advocacy group, where she holds a newly created chair endowed by Mark Cuban, “The Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents.”

2006

• T. Jay Campbell Jr. has been elected partner at Adams and Reese.
• Sarah Beth Krause has joined Bass Berry & Sims in Nashville. She was previously in-house employee benefits counsel at Amgen.
• Laura Ford Rose has been named partner at Adams and Reese in Jackson, Mississippi.

2007

• Todd R. Hambidge has joined Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis as an associate based in Nashville.

2008

• Dongok Jeon joined Kim & Chang in Seoul in April 2012, working in both the corporate and the international arbitration groups. Don had served as a judge advocate in the Republic of Korea Air Force and Ministry of National Defense. Don has been married for almost three years and has a 2-year-old son and a 4-month-old daughter.
• Robert Tadashi Matsuishi has joined the Orange County, California, office of Payne & Fears as an associate.

2009

• Marci Elaine Britt is clerking for Judge Virginia M. Hernandez Covington of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida. Marci worked for two years as an associate at Phelps Dunbar in Tampa, where she was featured as a “Lawyer Giving Back” in the February 2012 ABA Journal.
• Charles Gearing received the Dallas Association of Young Lawyers’
• 2013 Pro Bono Service Award. Charlie is an associate with Haynes and Boone. His pro bono work includes 500 hours assisting in the post-conviction representation of Juan Lizcano, a Mexican citizen sentenced to death in Texas in 2007.
• Rachel Gore Freed and her husband, Jon, welcomed a son, Devon Gore Freed, on April 5. Rachel and Jon live in Boston, where Rachel is working at the Environmental Law Center.
• Lauren M. Lowe has joined Equip for Equality, a Chicago-based advocacy organization, as a staff attorney after serving there for two years as a Skadden Fellow.
• Jamie Ellen Machamer has joined the Nashville firm DHPM.
• Ngozi Chinwe Joe-Nwankwo (LLM) and her husband, Joe C. Nwankwo (LLM’10), welcomed Chisom and Amara, twin girls, on June 25, 2012. Chisom and Amara join big brother Chidi, 6. The family resides in Nashville where Ngozi and Joe have established a private practice.
• Sheena Shukkur (LLM) was interviewed in The Hindu, a major Indian newspaper, for her work on reforming legal education in India.

2010

• Joshua Logan Burgener (BA’05) and his wife, Lindsay Sweetin Burgener (BA’03), welcomed their first child, Charlotte Louise, on November 1, 2012. Josh is an attorney at Wiseman Ashworth in Nashville.
• Ryan Thomas Holt (BA’05) and R. Mark Donnell Jr. ’11 (BS’05) received the Nashville Bar Journal’s article of the year award for their article, “Civil Lawyers in a Criminal World: Gideon v. Wainwright and Training with the Public Defender,” which appeared in the September 2012 issue of the Nashville Bar Journal.
• Benjamin Kraft Raybin has joined Hollins Raybin & Weissman in Nashville as an associate. Ben previously clerked for Judges Jane B. Stranch ’78 (BA’75) and Gilbert S. Merritt ’60, both of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

2011

• Robert W. Crump has joined King & Ballow in Nashville as an associate.
• Caitlyn W. Davie is an associate with Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis in Nashville.
• Patrick Hely (BA’06) and Katherine Van Deusen Hely were married on September 2012 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Among the bridesmaids were Emily Beverage and Mallory Hely (BA’09), sister of the groom. Josh Rubin (BS’05, MD’10) served as the best man, and Jon Casey (BS’06), Joe Goodell (BA’06), Mike Howard (BS’06), Jody Smith (BS’06) and Matt Wilkins (BA’06) were groomsmen. The couple lives in West Palm Beach, Florida, where Katherine practices international law with George C.J. Moore and Patrick practices with Page Mrachek Fitzgerald Rose Knoopka & Dow.
• Elizabeth Johnston will serve as a Skadden Fellow at the National Women’s Law Center in Washington, D.C., from 2013–15. She is currently clerking for Judge Anthony Trenga of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
• Kyle McEntee was included in Law.com’s 2013 list of the 100 Most Influential Lawyers in America. Kyle was recognized as a founder of Law School Transparency, an Atlanta-based nonprofit that advocates for accurate reporting by law schools of graduates’ employment data.
• Sean Perryman is an associate with Jackson Walker in Dallas.
• Andrew Price is an associate with Moore & Van Allen in Charlotte.
• Lauren Michelle Ramos has joined Pender & Coward in Virginia Beach, Virginia, as an associate. Lauren previously clerked for Judge John T. Nixon ’60 (BA’55) of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee.
• Stephanie Ann Roth has joined Bass Berry & Sims in Nashville.
• Joshua Thomas is a staff attorney with the Legal Aid Society of Middle Tennessee and the Cumberlands, based in Columbia, Tennessee.

2012

• D. Andrew Curtis has joined Riley Warnock & Jacobson in Nashville as an associate.
• Mike Dreyfuss and Dustin Timblin have joined Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis as associates based in Nashville.